


The Continuing Adventures of William Smee

by Ael_tRlailiiu



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 03:53:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4206954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ael_tRlailiiu/pseuds/Ael_tRlailiiu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of missing scenes focusing on Mr Smee, first mate of the Jolly Roger. </p>
<p>I am well aware that no one asked for this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Waking Up

When the curse broke on that fine sunny morning and William Smee remembered his name, he had a broom in his hands. He looked at it for a moment, then out the window of the confectionary shop at a street full of dazed people. Memory flooded back--so  much memory. How many years had passed in this land since the dark cloud swept down? How many days had he spent sweeping the floors, polishing the glass, washing the pans, and never tasting more than the occasional stale crumb? 

Smee put the broom away. Mr and Mrs Fisher, the couple who ran the shop in between snapping at one another, would not return for an hour yet if they returned at all. First things first: he leaned down behind the display case and spent a long moment just inhaling. Fruit and sugar, almonds and cream,  butter .... 

He took his time and made a proper feast of it. Only then, and with an occasional satiated groan, did he clean out the cash register and make a survey of the storeroom for useful tools. He put those in one of the painfully whimsical canvas totes no one ever bought, with its design of a cake bursting out of another cake, and went out.

Smee had never wanted much when he started out in life, only to live forever and to get as far away from the mining village of his childhood as possible. He had accomplished the latter and gotten enough of the former to recognize it for a bad idea. His dreams these days were smaller ones. 

People filled the streets, talking in hushed voices or searching frantically for loved ones. He didn’t recognize any of them as he walked the few short blocks to the waterfront. Of course the ship wasn’t there. More to the point, neither was her captain. Smee combed through his memories of Storybrooke and found a handful of his fellow crew, but no Hook. 

Doubtless he would turn up.

The newly uncursed population heaved to and fro through the town like fish herded by dolphins. Smee hung about the docks and nibbled from his sack of provisions as he listened to the radio. Updates rolled out along with requests for contact and announced locations where families could find each other. It was all Regina’s fault -- no one knew where she was -- she had been killed -- correction, she had been jailed -- Snow White and Prince Charming were alive, and in charge -- their daughter was Sheriff Swan, and she had broken the curse. 

Roger turned up around noon, and then Tommy a while later, cautious and relieved to see a familiar (friendly) face. They shared Tommy’s bottle of rum and their stories.

“I was a  gardener ,” Tommy said with a dangerous look. “For those big houses up on the other side of town. Grubbing in the  dirt  all day, can you believe it?” 

“Clerk up to the hospital,” Roger said. “You think dirt’s bad, at least it’s honest work, not those tetchy antique… keyboards.” He hesitated, as if the word felt odd in his mouth now. “And coming home to a wife what can’t stand you.”

“A wife?” Smee looked at him in surprise. “Who is she? I mean, who is she really?”

“Haven’t the foggiest. She’s already packed up and gone. What’d the old witch have you doing?”

“Sweeping up at the pastry shop. Twenty-eight years of look but don’t touch. Or eat.” 

They contemplated that cruelty and passed the bottle around again.

“So what now?” Roger asked. “No ship. Nobody’s seen himself, so I’m guessing he’s not here. Just as well maybe, with the Dark One in town.” 

“Lay low, I suppose? Life as usual, more or less?” Smee cast a rueful glance seaward. “It’s not fair, after all those years.”

“Rum go,” Tommy agreed. “Where you gonna be at? Case anything does turn up.”

“I’ve got a place by the cannery.” Smee jerked in his head in that direction. “May as well stay put until things shake out a little.” They parted ways as the shadows lengthened. 

Regina’s curse had given Smee small, bare quarters, an empty kitchen, and the smell but not the sight of the sea. Like everyone else in town, he looked around at the familiar-strange room and felt overwhelmed by it. He was William Smee, who had run away at thirteen from the prospect of life at the bottom of a hole, been a thief and then a pirate and earned his captain’s trust in Neverland. He was Edwin Tums, whose memories were fogged and patchy in places, but clear enough when it came to going to bed hungry every night in those years without time, to being alone.

Smee had never even  met the queen. He could hardly imagine what those years had been like for people she actually hated. 

In a box in the bottom of the closet he found his hat, the only thing it seemed he had left from that other life. He pulled it on and went out to see what he could find unguarded in Storybrooke. 


	2. Finding Work

Streetlights shattered under a howling wind. The wraith flung cars aside with tornado force, some of them occupied.

Smee was a pirate, a hardened member of the Jolly Roger’s crew, with centuries of bloodshed under his belt. He had stayed alive for all that time by knowing when to find cover. He hid under a porch on a side street until the noise stopped.

He worked fast after that; finesse could come later. The wraith had kindly smashed the front windows of the hardware store, and he filled the silly canvas tote with tools -- a crowbar, bolt cutters, gloves, rope. On the far side of the street he saw someone in dark clothes emerge from another smashed storefront. They regarded one another for a tense moment. Smee gave a cautious wave and got one in return, and they both went about their business.

With the proper tools in hand and no more demons swooping overhead, he stopped twice more on his way home and fortified his cash reserves. The power had gone out over most of the town. Silence reigned. He listened for sirens and heard none, realized that was an Edwin thought. Who would drive the ambulances today, or work at the hospital--or at the bar, or the body shop, or on the fishing boats? 

Boats, of course, were an option. He could steal a boat, get out of this town, start fresh somewhere else. The wraith’s destructive path did not reach this far. He stopped before one of Storybrooke’s half-dozen maritime supply stores and looked toward the harbor. Time was, a boat would have been the last place he thought of as a refuge -- certainly not that day they’d dragged him on board the  Jolly Roger , searched him, took the bean and left him tied in the hold while they dealt with more urgent matters. He had only met Milah that once and very briefly, but Smee remembered flashing eyes and a set to her jaw that said that if he crossed her, he wouldn’t live long enough to regret it. 

All this over a woman? he had asked once in Neverland, when he was no longer such a green hand that the question would get him a clout from senior crew. The captain’s quest made a sort of sense, even if Smee had never known or really even imagined that kind of love. What did it matter to the rest of them? The only answer had been,  She was one of us. We don’t forget.

Decades might pass between their visits to the Enchanted Forest shores he had known. The shopkeepers’ faces grew old in between; that girl became a grandmother; that town was swept by fire; the ship didn’t change at all. There had been chances for Smee to leave. He could have run off, far from the island and its demonic master. Pan wouldn’t have noticed, and Killian wouldn’t have made time to care, but… one of us. He stayed. 

In Storybrooke, he made short work of the shop’s locked door. No one would be answering alarms tonight. He didn’t take much -- instruments, maps, a few tools to augment the ones he already had.

He got back to find that someone had broken into his apartment -- they hadn’t taken anything, since there wasn’t anything to take, but he had to fix the door. The outline of his plan evaporated when he heard the news about the town line.

***

He had been to the Bilge a hundred times before, and it had never felt like this. The lowest tier of Storybrooke drinking establishments had never looked like this, either; returned memories had brought an entirely different mix of customers than the cursed years had seen. He recognized many of them from other lands than this. Smee got a beer and a table to himself and waited for a fight to start.  

An older man entered, jowly and grim-faced, his bearing at odds with his worn clothing as he surveyed the room from just within the door.

“Looking for someone, sir?” Smee swooped in, hat in hand. “Or something?”

“Possibly.” The man looked him up and down with an expression Smee knew well. That mild revulsion mixed with calculation spelled someone of importance who was out of his depth.

“Begging your pardon, sir, but you don’t look like one who would frequent such a place as this.  Perhaps I can be of assistance?”

The man snorted, but said, “I’m looking for someone. Someone who can help me with a bit of work, and be discreet about it.”

“Then I’m the man you want. If you would?” He steered the man to the table and heard Mr French’s tale of a woman who fallen in with the wrong crowd, barely more than a child really and in need of right steering. Smee could handle one woman. While her father did not look wealthy in this world, he had clearly been of importance back in the Enchanted Forest. Given the disorder that reigned in Storybrooke, a favor might be more useful than cash. 

Two days later, Smee found himself for the second time in his life face to face with the Dark One. He wore clothes from this world, didn’t have scales, and walked with a stick, but there was no mistaking him, and Smee had never been so glad in his life to be able to tell the truth as he was regarding his captain’s whereabouts: “I’ve never seen him in Storybrooke.”


End file.
